train
Ladies and gentlemen
I’m hungry
A dollar
A nickel, a penny, anything would help
Maybe a piece of fruit
And if you are feeling up to a hug
Heads shift up out of habit
But then retire back to their book
Anywhere to avert their eyes
Same ol' song and dance
For some, this F train
has been their performance space, platform , and sounding board
for years
No woman, no cry no woman no cry
I remember whenna we used to it…
In between, fade outs of public speeches and entertainment
we sit unfazed or at least sport a mask of sub-emotion
fade back in, and become the clinking, the clattering of the train amid a fog of conversations
“Delancy, East Broadway next stop”
train escorts us along
paranoia sets in, of my fellow, intimately situated stranger
reading my most private of thoughts
I look up to determine that he is quite submerged in his own reading
My narcissism, such self-importance to assume this stranger is just aching to share in even just a glimpse of my material
My profanity on paper
Any concern for privacy
Material for my own consumption
look around and take in all of the people in my wide-angle view, my telephoto
outcry of averting eyes
towards public ads: CUNY
Legal assistance, en espanol
Glasses, sans glasses, headphones, black, white, ipods, iphones, blackberries, songs seeping tinny through cheap phones, muffled crap music through others
A palette of fluorescent light and mundane hues, not too foreign from the office I just escaped
We ride in this familiar interior for 20 minutes and more a day strangers to one another we are the pole holders, or the lucky few who are the seat dwellers
We are strangers we are each other, we are new Yorkers.
transport me, transfer me
Transport me, transfer me
Serrendipously, lovingly
In this vessel, this silver submarine
Sleepy and serene
With out an exterior scene
We are forced to look with in
With those we share this 60 feet tin
A temporary place with our urban kin
United we stand
United we claim our place in this 20 minute space
Us lucky ones sit
Unyielding
Colors in dream
redeem
a seat or
a lean
Conversations in Yiddish, Russian ,Spanish
Brooklynish
We ride along in a daze, day dreaming to be someone else, somewhere else
love
A grab from around the waist
As she does the dishes
A stern, ‘not now Joe’
To follow
‘to my beautiful wife’
‘to my loving husband’
this is how they address one another
on paper during holidays
she wears the pants
he provides them
she dictates
he educates
she reads circulars
he cuts the grass
she leans into the dishwasher
he smacks her ass
they argue, they fight
they bitch and they yell
they dwell
in safety and support
in love
a communion only they can know
kids they come and go
they come and go
pets they live and die
they live and die
a couple , they grow and grow
fore ever they grow
he calls her Bell
she calls him Joe,
